1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a clamping and adjustment apparatus for a cutting tool, as well as a corresponding cutting tool and a tool cartridge for a cutting tool.
2. Description of Related Art
In generic tools of this sort, the cutters are not located directly on the tool itself but rather on corresponding cutter inserts, particularly exchangeable inserts which are screwed down on the tool. Cutter supports such as cartridges which are fastened to the tool and support corresponding cutting inserts are also known.
Through the use of such cutting inserts, a decoupling of the material of the tool from the material on the cutters occurs which makes it possible to use certain expensive and hard cutting materials such as cermet or the like or coatings such as diamond, whereas the tool shank can be manufactured from a ductile, less expensive material. The important question here concerns a fine setting of the axial or radial position of the cutting edge(s) of the cutting insert with respect to the tool axis in order to obtain on the one hand cost effects due to greater manufacturing tolerances in the cutting insert manufacture and on the other hand to be able to compensate for the wear on the cutting edges during usage as well as—at least to a small extent—other measurement or adjustment accuracies.
In this connection, a single-cutter reamer with an exchangeable cutting edge has already been proposed in the patent document DE 1 752 151 in which an adjusting screw is used to actuate a tightening wedge in order to press on the lateral surface of a cutting blade so that it is adjustable in terms of its radial position. The cutting edge is squeezed using binding screws in its approximate position while the fine adjustment takes place by means of the adjusting screw and the tightening wedge. The adjusting and binding screws extend radially through the entire tool member.
Moreover, a milling cutter is known from US document U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,444 whose cutting inserts are clamped using screws against an insert seat; since the threaded hole does not run under the insert seat at a 90° angle to the support surface but rather at a certain angular offset, a contact force acts in the direction on the radially inside lateral wall on the insert seat, the insert being prestressed against the lateral wall in this manner. In the radial direction, the insert is supported on a guide surface. The radially inside lateral wall is formed by an actuatable tightening wedge which presses with its wedge surface against the insert, it being possible to finely adjust the radial position of the insert in this manner. The tightening wedge is formed as a sleeve. The actuation of the tightening wedge sleeve takes place by means of a differential screw with which the tightening wedge sleeve is screwed down essentially axially with the tool so that when tightening the screw, the wedge surface of the tightening wedge presses against the insert and forces it radially outwards under corresponding bending of the insert threaded joint.
Further clamping or rather adjustment apparatuses for clamping and finely adjusting cutter inserts in cutting tools have been disclosed, for example, in the following documents: DE 197 25 219 A1, DE 195 21 599 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 6,155,753, U.S. Pat. No. 3,339,257, U.S. Pat. No. 3,195,376, DE 4403188, DE 2806079 and JP 10277839.
Starting out from U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,444, the object of the invention is to create a clamping and adjustment apparatus for a generic tool which allows accurate adjustment while requiring only a small amount of space. Moreover, the object of the invention is to further develop a generic tool as well as a corresponding tool cartridge in such a manner that a greater fine adjustment range can be achieved with decreased loading on the attachment of the cutter insert.